Unhuman Acts

by Candace Blevins

  Cora’s voice came in my head. It’s okay to let them know I say he’ll be fine, too.

  “Cora tells me the same. The wolf can better balance the pack’s energy, so he’s still in wolf form.”

  “What can you tell me?” Brain asked.

  “So far, we have reports of half-demons, Celrau, honey badgers, and a variety of reptile shifters. Abbott and Aaron’s homes were destroyed.” Nathan glanced at me. “Homewood was attacked by two honey badgers, but Kirsten and Cora thwarted the attack. TBC was hit hardest, but Drake and Homewood assisted in the battle, and the building’s still standing. No one’s tried to attack my home, or any of my people’s homes or businesses. To my knowledge, the Concilio and the other neutral heavy hitters haven’t been heard from, which tells me this attack isn’t over. It’s possible we’ve merely seen the first wave. Stay on your toes.”

  “We are, but thanks for the heads up.”

  Nathan disconnected, and I told him, “Mordecai almost always shows up to check on me after something like this.”

  Nathan took a bite and swallowed. “The fact he hasn’t is another big clue it isn’t over.”

  “Or that this is the official first skirmish,” said Jayce, “and those from Olympus are going to stay out of it until the overall battle is decided.”

  “Are we talking days, weeks, or months?” I asked.

  “Could go either way,” said Nathan.

  I shook my head. Mordecai wouldn’t stay gone that long. Would he?

  Suddenly, my head was full of people talking, and it took me a minute to sort it out. Cora had people patrolling our property, and a group of half-demons with an imperator were sniffing around the spot we’d buried the container.

  I’d known she could telepath with the hawks, but I hadn’t heard them in her head yet.

  I looked at Isaac. “We don’t have a mutual aid pact with Abbott, but I need your help. An imperator and honey badgers are on our property.”

  Nathan leaned back in his chair and focused on Isaac. “Drake Security just helped save your ass, and now we’re asking you to help someone under our protection.”

  Isaac dipped his chin. “Who’s driving?”

  “She’ll take me and Cora to the woods nearby, and then will come back and get you.”

  Isaac looked to Jayce. “I need you in charge here. Use Byron, whether he agrees to it or not.”

  Jayce nodded, and I stood. Nathan and Cora moved to my side, and I stepped us into the nothingness and then to the woods a hundred yards from the clearing we’d been in the previous day. I popped right back to TBC, and Isaac was standing. Still naked. I ignored his nudity, wrapped my arms around him from the side, and we joined Nathan and Cora.

  I’d been gone three seconds, but all hell broke loose while I was gone.

  Nathan weighs around eight hundred to a thousand pounds in lion form, but even with his size, I wasn’t sure he’d win against three giant honey badgers. Isaac immediately shifted to his warrior form, but he was on four legs with no arms this time, instead of two legs holding his entire weight. I noted the other imperator had done the same. Were they testing his limits?

  I shot a laser at one of the honey badgers running towards us, aiming for his eye, but I couldn’t hit it with the fucker’s odd gait. Isaac reached down and grabbed one, crunched down on it, and tossed it across the field. He had to take a few fast steps to catch the second, and he gave it the same treatment. The third was too far away, and he made his way to the other imperator. At least Nathan only had one honey badger to fight.

  Meanwhile, Cora was still loaded down with ammo, and she was in a firefight with some half-demons. Or that’s what I assumed they were. Red eyes and horns — they could’ve been full demons, but Xaephan once told me they didn’t show the eyes and horns when here.

  I was no longer loaded down with weapons, and in retrospect, I probably should’ve situated myself on a tall tree somewhere and exploded heads, but one of the demons jumped on the backhoe and started digging, and it pissed me off.

  So, I went through the nothingness to get across the field, and I landed inside the little glass compartment with him.

  All demons are not created equal.

  I knew this. I did. Perhaps I was too cocky, or maybe I’d been around Xaephan too much. At any rate, I landed and was in the process of forming a light-knife when the demon’s fist struck me in the face and everything went dark.

  I’m told Cora went close to berserk, which is an actual thing for wolves. A bad thing. Nathan tore the demon into pieces, but not before the bastard bit me.

  Bit. Me.

  I awakened in one of the safest rooms in our castle, with Cora, Nathan, and Mordecai.

  However, I couldn’t talk. My eyes were open so I could see, and I could hear them talking, but I couldn’t speak.

  Mordecai was telling them Bran’s blood wouldn’t heal this, and he was ordering Nathan to call Xaephan.

  What’s wrong with me? I aimed it at Cora, and she spun to look at me.

  The demon bit you.

  I hurt everywhere. I don’t remember him biting me.

  “She’s awake and telepathing.”

  Mordecai stopped talking and looked down at me.

  “Well, that’s something. You need Xaephan. Only a high-level demon can heal you.”

  He’s owes me a favor. Will that be enough?

  I don’t know what he’ll demand, Kitten.

  Ya’ll should take me to the basement before you call him.

  Mordecai nodded and told Nathan, “She wants you to take her to the basement of the house and call Xaephan. Don’t do it from the castle.”

  Nathan glared at me. “He’ll want more than you’ll be willing to give.”

  Then I won’t make the deal.

  Cora repeated what I’d said, and he nodded. “Okay, then.”

  Mordecai’s voice resonated in my head. I can’t stay, Kitten. My brother and I in the same room together would be bad.

  I know. Thanks for helping this much.

  Mordecai flashed me into the basement, and Cora and Nathan showed up a few minutes later. They probably had to argue about something before they followed. I was glad Mordecai moved me without touching me, because everything hurt. It was as if my blood had acid in it, and it was slowly eating me from the inside. My muscles hurt. My lungs hurt. My joints hurt. I was pretty sure I was dying. I wanted to gasp for air, but I didn’t have control over any part of my body. The shallow breaths it was taking weren’t enough. I was starved for oxygen.

  Nathan called Xaephan, who smiled when he saw me, and then suddenly looked pissed.

  And worried, but mostly pissed.

  “I will roast the insides of whoever bit you, over and over for an infinity of aeons.” He said it in a growl, and even I was afraid for the demon who’d done this to me.

  “They know you’re mine. Fuck, Chère.” He took a breath. “Nine favors to heal you. I owe you one, so you’ll owe me eight when it’s all done.”

  I tried to shake my head, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. My eyes were getting worse, too. I’d been able to move my eyeballs, but now they were tracking slower. Soon, I wouldn’t even be able to move them.

  Three. No more.

  “It isn’t negotiable, love. I’m sorry. I’ll have to ask for favors to make it happen, and there are rules about…” He shrugged. I can drop it to eight, but you’ll still owe me seven.

  I’m pretty sure I’m dying, but if you do this, you’ll own me. You’ll be able to take me to Hell with you. You’ll own my entire soul.

  When you hit seven favors, they own you. Mordecai had been quite clear about never letting myself owe more than five, just to be safe.

  But you’ll be alive.

  I made sure Cora would be able to hear what I told Xaephan. I’d rather be dead than belong to you in Hell. No deal.

  She looked to Nathan and made an odd motion. Nathan said the words that would send Xaephan away.

  No! I was still negotiating
with him!

  Cora did something on her phone, and Mordecai was back.

  I was still negotiating! They sent him away too fast!

  There’s always the chance he engineered this, so you’d have to choose between death or belonging to him, Kitten. There’s another option — it’ll either kill you or keep you alive until we can come up with something else. You’re so close to death, I have to risk it.

  He lifted me in his arms, and the next thing I knew, we were in his pool. Pain stabbed into every cell and molecule and nerve ending in my body. I was no longer Kirsten. No longer a being of thoughts and feelings — only pain existed in my world, as if the forces of light and dark battled in my very DNA, and I could do nothing to stop it.

  I was completely submerged, a snorkel in my mouth.

  “Breathe!”

  Mordecai reminded me of an ancient wizard, issuing orders one couldn’t possibly go against, and I dragged air into my body through the snorkel. An improvement. I hadn’t been able to do that before.

  “Again! Breathe!”

  At first, I could only manage it on command. It seemed he forced me to pull air into my body for hours before the pain eventually diminished enough I could breathe without being ordered to.

  I’m told I meditated in his pool for three days before I opened my eyes and talked. I lost all track of time while I stayed submerged in his pool, a long hose running to the surface so I could breathe.

  Finally, my meditation ended and I knew what I had to do. I poked my head above water, enough so my lips were free to speak.

  “There’s a castle somewhere, on a mountain that mirrors…” I stopped and started again. “We call our saferoom area under the hill the castle because somewhere, that hill is a castle. I need you to take me there.”

  Apollonius had said it was lost, but my instincts told me that was a partial truth. Mordecai’s expression told me the same thing.

  “How do you know this?”

  “How isn’t important. I need to go to the castle.”

  He shook his head. “The pool has you stable, but the moment you leave, you’ll begin dying again. You can’t leave until we work out a solution.”

  “I can’t stay here forever. You can bring me back before I die, right? I’ll hurt, but I should be able to function for a while?”

  “You may not beat the darkness again. We can’t risk it.”

  I sighed. “Take me, or I’ll find my own way.”

  He crossed his arms and looked even bigger than usual. “You are the most hard-headed, obstinate red-head of them all!”

  “Are you taking me?”

  “I won’t let you get so close to death again.”

  My insides relaxed. He was going to take me.

  “We’ll have to journey the final seven miles the old fashioned way. I’ll make arrangements. You need to go back under so the waters can keep you in top condition before we leave.” He sighed. “I’ll need a few hours.”

  I’m certain the soup I was fed before we left was made with the healing waters of the pool, but I didn’t ask.

  Chapter 4

  When I was at last taken from the pool, I was dressed in a fancy white-and-gold flowing dress, straight out of a movie. The fabric was sheer white, with enough layers to cover my important bits. The neckline, waist, and trim at the base were all gold. I didn’t ask, but I had a feeling real gold had been somehow woven into the fabric.

  And then we went outside, and a majestic white stallion was hooked up to an honest-to-goodness chariot.

  “Speed is of the essence, so I chose a chariot instead of a carriage. However, since you need to conserve your strength, I had a chair mounted in the front for you, and I’ll stand behind you.”

  I didn’t argue. He knew where we were going and what we’d encounter when we arrived.

  And he wasn’t wrong about needing to conserve my strength.

  I’d been wrong about the castle being on Olympus, however. We went through a portal to Alfheim. The home of the elves.

  Riding in a chariot isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. It was rough, and bouncy, and dusty.

  “Few here speak English. However, the magic of the land automatically translates, so you hear the other person in your native tongue, and they’ll hear you in theirs. If you don’t think something translated quite right, say it a different way. There are rarely problems, but the magic isn’t perfect.”

  “Who lives in the castle? What am I walking into?”

  “It seems you should’ve asked this earlier, but I’ll tell you what I can. Once upon a time, a being known as Elrond ruled the land. Legend calls him the Erlkönig, who became the Harlequin, also known as the Goblin King. Now, a ruling class of stewards live there, waiting for the Goblin King’s return.”

  “Are there goblins there?”

  “In English, you’d call them sprites and elves. You have wood sprites on your new property. I can sense them, though I haven’t seen them.”

  “Shouldn’t they be in Faerie?”

  “For whatever reason, they live on your land. There are many in Ireland, Scotland, and some of the rural areas of England. I’ve seen a good many in pockets of what are now the Great Smokey Mountains, and in other Appalachian mountains nearby. Their home is Alfheim. They are also welcome to live in Faerie. Some of them seem to prefer places of energy in the human realm.”

  “What race are the stewards?”

  “The same race as The Goblin King. You’ll think of them as elves — tall and thin.”

  Twenty minutes in, I recognized the road going up the mountain. We were coming in as if from Powell’s Crossroads and Ketner’s Gap, instead of from the direction of Chattanooga. The road is steeper and curvier, and I recognized one of the switchbacks. Then another. The horses slowed on the steep, windy road. We didn’t make good time.

  “Why couldn’t we step into this realm closer to the castle?”

  “Bringing humans here is frowned upon. Bringing one recently bitten by a demon would create an incident so big, you’d have been dead long before we made it through the first round of talks about it. I requested permission and called in several favors to make it happen, but I had to use the portal they offered. My assumption is that they wanted time to get a feel for you before they let you near their ruling family.”

  Pulling onto our driveway from the main road was surreal. It was the same, and yet not. The land and road were the same, but the trees weren’t. The poison in my body was still there, and I felt the effects growing again.

  I was reaching out to the trees and asking for help when we pulled up to the magnificent castle, and a cedar tree was in nearly the same place as my cedar tree.

  The tree gave me a river of energy. Healing energy. I breathed it in and thanked the beautiful cedar that looked so much like mine. Without thinking, I moved past Mordecai, stepped out of the back of the chariot, and made my way to the tree, ignoring the armed guards.

  I heard Mordecai warning me, but it didn’t seem important. Only the tree was important. It welcomed me, greeted me.

  Healed me.

  Or… no. It rejuvenated me, but it didn’t heal me. Still, I was even better than I’d been in the pool. I instinctively knew I’d start getting worse again once I left the tree’s influence.

  Suddenly, the castle doors were flung open and people came streaming out. Tall, elven beings as well as short. Mordecai had called the shorter beings Sprites. The term Woodland Sprite came to mind, and it seemed right. Some resembled bushes, others mushrooms, others flowers. A few taller ones reminded me of trees. It was impossible to describe them, but it felt as if I’d come home.

  Tears came to my eyes and I wanted to hug these beings I didn’t know, but they all went to their knees — elves and sprites. Some went all the way to the ground, much as Nathan’s lionesses sometimes do, and I wasn’t at all comfortable with it.

  My cedar tree morphed into a tall sprite and spread her arms in invitation. I went into her embrace and let her hold me.
<
br />   I heard someone speak with power. “Our Queen is gravely injured. We must have the healing potion!”

  The cedar-tree-turned-sprite carried me into the huge, beautiful white castle. I turned to look at Mordecai in alarm, but his nod assured me he’d stay close and I should go with the flow.

  I was taken through a huge foyer with grand staircases and into a courtyard, where an old lady seemed to be holding court. Once again, my subconscious supplied the correct term. Crone.

  She was dressed in black with long grey hair. Her fingers reminded me of a crow’s claws. Or talons? I wasn’t sure what they were called.

  I accepted the ladle she offered, but looked to Mordecai before dipping into her large cauldron. He nodded, and I turned back to the crone.

  “Thank you.”

  She nodded, I filled the mug, and she motioned for me to drink it.

  It smelled like honeysuckles and roses, and it tasted like honeysuckles and lavender.

  I felt instantly better, but she told me, “This will keep you alive a few days. I can also prepare a poultice for your injury, which will give you yet more days, but the only thing that will heal you is at the center of the labyrinth.”

  The entire energy of the courtyard changed, and I looked around. People were on balconies looking down, and the courtyard was packed. They were mostly elves and sprites, but I thought I saw a few dwarves and possibly some other species.

  Finally, someone from above shouted, “We’ve finally found her. She can’t be taken from us so soon!”

  The crowd murmured in agreement, and someone else yelled, “If she can’t make it to the center, she isn’t our queen, fools!”

  It seemed it was time for me to step up and do something. “I need to speak with my advisor, and I’d like some time with the Stewards, please?”